Setting up a beautiful haven!

It has been a while since I have started living in a hostel, 9 months precisely. Recently I realized that I hadn’t yet accepted the room as my own. I started looking for ways to decorate it, mark my area, if you will. These days any small thing happens, and off we go firing up the search engines, which was exactly what I did! I came across soo many DIY home decor tips and tricks and was excited to try them all out. But as usual my laziness took over and I did not get anything accomplished. I modified my search to DIY under an hour tips for home decor and voila!… There I was… finally with a strong seed of an idea firmly planted in my head! I had got the inspiration I wanted and it came by the name Washi tapes!!

These tapes are actually made of a type of paper called Washi which originated in Japan. The best part is they do not leave any sticky tape residue on the surface they are put on, which was a critical requirement for me as we are not allowed to make any permanent changes to the room we are staying in. The only thing remaining was to go out and buy them, which I did one fine day by forcing my roomies to come along with me! The trip to the art & crafts market that day was amazing! The place in question is Crawford market in Mumbai. Armed with my pretty new tapes I was all set to decorate my side of the room to my heart’s content!

And then I ran into a block I think, I had so many ideas that I couldn’t follow one! Also I was (still am) in love with these tapes and could not bring myself to use them. So every day it became a ritual to just look at the tapes and wonder whether to use them and risk them getting over. Then one day my roomie got out a pretty gift shop envelope she had saved. We both decided that we should put it on the wall. A bit reluctantly I got my tapes out and started checking which one to sacrifice first… I got a tape which suited the poster envelope well and decided to use it, with a heavy heart. The envelope was pretty big and I decided to frame it with the tape on the wall which also meant more tape to be sacrificed. I did the frame and put it on the wall. The final result stunned me! It was so beautiful! The already pretty poster was made to look even more attractive with the tape!! Here is how it looked. I wake up to this poster everyday-

This poster inspired me and I decide to finally do up my side of the wall which was empty and bland since many days! First I thought of putting up a select few pictures on my wall and frame them with the tapes as shown in many of the washi tape blogs, but looking at old pictures make me nostalgic and emotional and that’s why I thought against it. This was the wall I would see everyday and I wanted it to make me feel calm and happy. I am very fond of oil pastels and even though I am not a very good artist, I can recreate a decent picture (mostly downloaded from online oil pastel drawings – Although I don’t know the original artists, a big thank you to them for giving me the pleasure of recreating their paintings at a coarse level!) So out I got my pastel paintings and put them on the wall and I could find a tape which went very well with each of them. I put all the pastels on one side and the pencil sketches on the other. The end result was amazing-

I am in love with my room and I can’t wait to expand my ‘art’ collection, which will be pretty soon as the summer vacation is near! Also I made a DIY lamp out of a bamboo bouquet basket. I should mention here that this idea was not originally mine.. my friend did it and I made one similar to hers. I just needed a circular thick cardboard base and plug for the bulb. I put a 10 watt low power bulb inside the basket and a very romantic lamp was ready to be installed!

So that is how I decorated my hostel room and added a dash of color and life to it. I am also including the site from which I got all the inspiration of washi tapes here. Hope you guys get inspired by this! Until the next time. Ciao!

Yugen

Came across this word today, pronounced as yoo-gehn, it is a Japanese word meaning – an awareness of the universe which triggers emotional response too deep and powerful for words. 

This word struck a chord with me immediately as it was the same indescribable feeling I had just a day ago. Although I have had this feeling many times before, this time was a bit different. All the other times I was looking at some natural phenomena – like moon, stars – or reading about some alien controversies. This time I was in a lab and looking through a microscope. The sample of silicon wafer I was looking at must be 2 cm X 1 cm by dimension, small by normal standards right? Not when zoomed 100X..

Apart from the observations I was supposed to note down, I was surprised to find so much space available on the ‘tiny’ piece of wafer! Oh yes.. I had done all the calculations and problem solving in theory where the solution would come out to be in micro-meter or nano-meter units, but to see what a nano-meter actually means felt… well Yugen. It hit me suddenly, the limitations which our senses and routine life put on our perspectives!

There I was sitting alone in the lab thinking these thoughts. I felt small and insignificant ..  I was humbled.. I was wordless.. I saw the beauty of it all on a tiny piece of wafer!

Here we go..

So this is my first blog.. after a lot of thinking I finally convinced myself to do this. The reasons were three fold – first, I read somewhere that PhD pursuers (ahem.. that’s me) should write a lot and what better way to write than a blog! The second has a tinge of vanity attached to it… and the last being one of the most important things on my bucket list- to get perspective… to know who I am and what defines me!

So yes… I think this is it for now!